How The World Will Change In 2025

Last year, we challenged 10 of our journalists from across our broadcast region to peer into the future and predict what the year ahead might bring. Gluttons for punishment, they’re back again — reflecting on 2024 and sharing their insights on what 2025 might have in store.

A few recurring themes emerge from their predictions:

• The war in Ukraine has become a global conflict, broadly pitting the West against an emerging bloc of states that are challenging the current world order.
• Populist movements and authoritarian leaders are gaining traction globally, putting pressure on democracy and democratic institutions.
• So much will hinge on Donald Trump. The president-elect’s return to the White House in January 2025 is already reshaping international dynamics — from transatlantic trade to politics in the Balkans.

For all this and more, read on.

Ukraine: Ending Putin’s War

By Vitalу Portnikov

At the end of 2023, I argued that even if one side achieved a military victory in Ukraine in 2024, it would not necessarily bring us closer to a political resolution.

This was true then and is true now, largely because Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine is part of a broader agenda, an attempt to restore, if not the Soviet empire itself, then at least its sphere of influence.

What could push the war in Ukraine closer to a resolution is the upcoming change at the White House. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump continues to assert his readiness to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

The question, though, is whether Trump’s intentions and determination will be enough. After all, change would require not only the incoming U.S. president’s commitment to ending the war but also agreement in Kyiv and Moscow to cease hostilities.

If Putin were to agree to end the conflict — despite continued Russian offensives on the battlefield and relentless strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure — it would likely hinge on two key factors.

The first is the Russian president’s recognition that his country’s economic situation cannot sustain a prolonged war. The second is Putin’s readiness to shift from military pressure on Ukraine to political influence and destabilization.

Under such a peace, Ukraine’s future would depend on the security guarantees provided by its Western partners and the resilience of Ukrainian society in resisting Russian attempts at destabilization, for example, a barrage of disinformation during a future presidential election.

If Putin concludes, however, that he has sufficient resources to continue the war, hostilities will persist — certainly into 2025 and even beyond.

Iran: A Challenging Year Ahead

By Hannah Kaviani

Following the sudden death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in May, a more moderate politician, Masud Pezeshkian, was elected as president.

Some Iranians saw Pezeshkian’s election as a potential sign that the country’s clerical rulers might soften their hard-line approach. However, by the end of 2024, Pezeshkian has yet to deliver on promises to ease restrictions on Iranian life.

There will be plenty for Pezeshkian to deal with: currency depreciation, environmental crises, an aging population, and worsening brain drain. Looming fuel price hikes, critical to addressing budget deficits, risk igniting protests like those in 2019 that left hundreds dead.

Internationally, Iran might have an even harder time. With Tehran’s allies — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and the ousted Syrian leadership — facing significant setbacks in 2024 and Israel launching attacks on Iran during the same year, Iranian politicians are for the first time in a while openly discussing developing nuclear weapons as the ultimate deterrent.

Tehran’s relationship with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is in a precarious state. As a result, European powers censured Tehran twice in 2024 — and if Western concerns are not resolved, then the process of reimposing UN sanctions on Iran could begin in the spring of 2025.

International pressure on Iran is only likely to ramp up with the arrival of Trump in the White House. In his first term, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal and argued for strict economic sanctions to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions and regional influence.

Hungary: The Rise Of Peter Magyar

By Pablo Gorondi

There weren’t any pundits who predicted the rapid rise of Peter Magyar. Less than a year ago, Magyar was a loyalist of right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban; now, he is the popular and dynamic leader of the Hungarian opposition.

Magyar’s Tisza Party shook the Hungarian political scene in June, winning a third of Hungary’s 21 seats in the European Parliament elections and performing well in local polls.

His rapid rise has created a headache for the ruling Fidesz party, which under Orban’s guidance has been widely criticized for democratic backsliding and authoritarian tendencies. The party resorted to attacks in the press and is even said to be contemplating early elections.

Orban, who has been widely criticized for leading Hungary, didn’t let the Magyar party spoil his time in the limelight, as Hungary held the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union during the second half of the year.

Orban began the presidency in spectacular and controversial fashion: In early July, he traveled to Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing, and Mar-a-Lago, trips he framed as efforts to end the war in Ukraine and for which European officials heavily criticized him for.

In December Orban, who endorsed Donald Trump as early as 2016, again visited the president-elect at his Florida residence. To put it mildly, European officials weren’t happy, criticizing Orban for his unauthorized and uncoordinated visits.

EU: Populism In ‘Fortress Europe’

By Rikard Jozwiak

The idea of “fortress Europe” ruled the roost in 2024, with member states increasingly tough on migration and looking for creative ways to outsource the issue to third countries. (Italy, for example, has set up migrant-processing centers in Albania.)

But even though there were gains for far-right and populist parties in national and European Parliament elections in 2024, the center still held — and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen won her coveted second term.

In 2025, it will be more of the same. Populist parties will continue to shape policies and politics within EU member states. In the Czech Republic, Andrej Babis, a populist billionaire and former prime minister, is likely to return to power in the fall, forming a neat Eurosceptic triangle with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.

In France, the populist left and right will continue to cause headaches for President Emmanuel Macron after his failed parliamentary elections gamble this summer. New elections will likely be held in the summer and Macron could suffer even a bigger defeat, with either the hard-left or hard-right securing a majority.

Germany is also heading to the polls, with parliamentary elections in February. And while the far-right Alternative For Germany party should get their best ever result — potentially 20 percent of the vote — you can expect a grand coalition of the center-left Social Democrats and the center-right Christian Democrats, with the latter’s leader, Friedrich Merz, set to become chancellor.

Donald Trump will be shaping Europe’s politics as much as any European during the year ahead. The U.S. president-elect could well push his European allies to spend more on defense at the NATO summit in the Netherlands in June.

And transatlantic trade frictions are also a distinct possibility, especially if Brussels hits Elon Musk, the tech tycoon and key Trump ally, and his X social media platform with billion-euro fines for not respecting social media rules in the bloc.

Belarus: Lukashenka Fears Being Left Out In The Cold

By Valer Karbalevich

In 2024, the authoritarian regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka continued its rapid evolution into a totalitarian state. Political repression intensified further, legitimized by two electoral campaigns that only outwardly resembled democratic elections.

Early in the year, a puppet parliament and local councils were elected. By the end of the year, a presidential campaign had begun, set to conclude in January 2025.

The alliance between Belarus and Russia strengthened and deepened, particularly in the military sphere, where Lukashenka is trying to bolster Belarus’s strategic position by hosting modern Russia weapons. The culmination of this process was the decision, announced in December, to deploy Russia’s advanced Oreshnik missile system in Belarus in the second half of 2025.

The main challenge for the Lukashenka regime in the next year will be navigating the new geopolitical reality shaped by potential peace talks on Ukraine. Minsk fears that its interests will be overlooked in the construction of a new security architecture for Eastern and Central Europe, which could emerge from these negotiations.

This is why he has brought forward by six months the presidential election. His goal is to secure renewed legitimacy as leverage for participation in such negotiations.

If the conflict in Ukraine remains frozen, however, Belarus could also remain frozen for years. The Lukashenka regime would consolidate and strengthen while all aspects of Belarusian life — from the economy to culture — would slowly degrade.

Afghanistan: A Grim Fight Over Women’s Rights

By Malali Bashir

The year 2024 was yet another desperate time for women’s rights in Afghanistan, culminating in December when the Taliban expanded its educational restrictions to prohibit private institutions from teaching women critical fields like midwifery, nursing, and laboratory sciences.

The latest restrictions build on measures from recent years that keep Afghan girls out of secondary schools and university educations

“This doesn’t just mean destroying the dreams of those girls who wanted to study and contribute to their communities,” said Heather Barr, associate director of the women’s rights division at the New York-based Human Rights Watch. “It also means this will cause deaths for women who won’t be able to access medical care.”

Unprecedented worldwide legal momentum against these limitations has also been building over the past year. Shukria Barakzai, the former Afghan ambassador to Norway, highlighted progress in 2024, pointing to international efforts to hold the Taliban accountable.

A major breakthrough came in November 2024 when a key UN General Assembly committee approved negotiations for the first-ever treaty specifically targeting crimes against humanity. This development could potentially address gender apartheid under international law, a crucial step long advocated by Afghan women’s rights activists.

Looking ahead to 2025, Barakzai sees some cause for optimism. “2025 could become the year of justice for Afghans, particularly Afghan women, as countries begin to mobilize against what is happening inside Afghanistan,” she said. However, Barr also emphasized that meaningful change requires sustained international pressure and advocacy.

Serbia: Vucic’s World

By Milos Teodorovic

Relations between Kosovo and Serbia remain at a historic low, at least since the start of EU-mediated negotiations in 2011. Efforts to normalize relations have stalled, still damaged by the 2022 withdrawal of Serb representatives from Kosovo’s state institutions, violent clashes in northern Kosovo the following year, and the killing of a Kosovar policeman in September 2023.

Despite the impasse, Serbia has maintained its signature balancing act in foreign policy: for example, refusing to sanction Russia while supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Belgrade has also deepened ties with Beijing.

In regional politics, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic remains a key player, and is particularly influential in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He is known to hold sway over pro-Russian populist leader Milorad Dodik from Republika Srpska, one of the two entities that make up Bosnia.

By appearing to pacify Dodik, Vucic regularly positions himself to the EU and the United States as a moderating force capable of tempering the destabilizing tendencies of Balkan extremists. However, his ambiguous stance often leaves observers questioning whether he contributes to stability, instability, or both.

In terms of the EU accession progress, Serbia is actually lagging behind Montenegro, after Podgorica made rapid progress within the last year. Some EU diplomats have even said Montenegro could potentially join the bloc this decade.

But it is the change at the White House that diplomats in the Balkans are now fixated on. Vucic, for one, is certainly hopeful. He and his allies have expressed optimism about Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency, hoping for a shift toward a more “Serbian-friendly” approach in U.S. policy.

Caucasus: Karabakh Peace Stalls While Georgia Explodes

By Joshua Kucera

A year ago, it looked as if a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan was on the horizon. Azerbaijan had just regained control of all of Nagorno-Karabakh, the territory at the heart of the conflict between the two sides. Both sides spoke of being nearly ready to sign a deal, with most of the fundamental issues agreed on.

Now, and we are more or less in the same place, with Armenia and Azerbaijan still debating the finer points of the peace deal, and sometimes it seems as if Azerbaijan may not actually want a deal at all.

Meanwhile, the attention in the Caucasus has shifted to Georgia. Its parliamentary elections in October were always going to be pivotal, but the crisis that has emerged is as dangerous as anyone could have expected.

The opposition and protesters have refused to accept the results of elections they say were illegitimate. The government crackdown is already the harshest in Georgia’s post-Soviet history. President Salome Zurabishvili, whose term ends December 29, is refusing to step down, setting up a high-stakes clash with the government. And relations with the United States and European powers, Georgia’s traditional main partners, keep getting worse.

At the time of writing, neither the government nor the opposition and protesters show any willingness to compromise. Making any predictions now would be foolhardy. Except that a year from now, Georgia’s politics are going to look a lot different than they do now.

Central Asia: Growing Authoritarianism

By Chris Rickleton

The conditions looked ripe for a renaissance of Russian power in Central Asia in 2024 and so it proved — although Moscow did not have everything its own way.

The Kremlin’s state-backed energy companies Gazprom and Rosatom enjoyed a banner year in Uzbekistan, with Russian gas exports roughly tripling and Moscow and Tashkent finally inking a deal for a small nuclear power facility.

Following a referendum on nuclear power in October 2024, Kazakhstan is also set to build a larger nuclear plant, and it would be a shock if Rosatom was not somehow involved.

At the same time, both Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan resisted pressure to join blocs important for Moscow’s prestige, while spats over the Russian language and Russia’s colonial legacy in the region do the Kremlin’s soft power prospects no good.

China, meanwhile, will continue winning friends in Central Asia in the year ahead via quiet diplomacy and multi-billion dollar investments, especially in the region’s emerging transport and renewable energy sectors.

The region as a whole will also become even more authoritarian. In Tajikistan and Turkmenistan that would appear almost impossible, but expect both to make an effort.

Meanwhile, in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, journalists and regime critics are steadily running out of rope thanks to restrictive new laws, chilling prison sentences, and an apparently shared sentiment across these governments that phasing out freedoms is all for the best.

Final Remarks: The Global War

By Sergei Medvedev

The war in Ukraine has reached truly global proportions. While it is fought in Ukraine, it involves dozens of countries, affecting populations as far away as Africa, South America, and East Asia.

It has caused the biggest global military buildup since the height of the Cold War, challenging the credibility of international institutions from NATO and the European Union to the UN and the International Criminal Court.

On one side, there is the Western alliance led by the United States and NATO supporting Ukraine. On the other, there is an emerging bloc of non-Western states who are challenging the current world order.

China is the heavyweight in this informal group, with Russia as a junior partner, and it is supported by the likes of Iran and North Korea. These states represent an alternative kind of globalization, with their new mechanisms to circumvent Western sanctions, new financial systems based on cryptocurrencies, and their own international institutions such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The battle lines are in Ukraine, but the war is taking place everywhere: Russia is meddling in elections all over the world (with Romania perhaps the most recent example) and is thought to be carrying out acts of sabotage in many Western countries. Meanwhile, the Middle East is once again engulfed in war; Venezuela is making territorial claims against its neighbor Guyana; and China is carefully watching the Ukraine conflict as it contemplates its own operation against Taiwan.

In 2025, that global war will gain momentum, and it is likely to expand irrespective of the situation on the ground in Ukraine. Even a possible cease-fire will likely not stop the global turmoil, let alone Russia’s expansionist zeal or the Kremlin’s desire to eliminate Ukrainian statehood and challenge NATO and the United States.

War in Ukraine has set off an avalanche. The elites of anti-globalization — from the Islamists to revanchists — are sensing blood, and there will be new outbreaks of conflict in unexpected places across the globe.

In this sense, Putin has succeeded in his long-term plan of turning this conflict into a global one and challenging the world order. Drawing an analogy with World War II, we are now somewhere in 1938, with a global challenger, an undecided West, and a new Munich Agreement looming. One can only hope to live to see a new 1945.